OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent

Posted by Will Wakeford on July 2, 2026

Self-hosted AI agents have been evolving into useful tools capable of managing your files, automating tasks, writing code and browsing the web for you - two of the most popular of these frameworks are OpenClaw and Hermes Agent. While they do share many of the same capabilities, they both approach the problem from different directions.

OpenClaw was released in November 2025, and defined what people expect from an open-source AI agent. Hermes arrived later in February 2026, and introduced a different approach. In this article I'll be comparing the two, which might help you decide which one to use!

The Differences

The most significant difference between Hermes is in how they acquire new capabilities. OpenClaw extends its functionality through human-written skills that are created and distributed via ClawHub. The skills defined there are explicit modules that users can install, update and share giving OpenClaw a curated and predictable ecosystem. Hermes, on the other hand, takes a different approach. Instead of using human created skills it generates them itself from its own experience, by analysing completed tasks and converting them into reusable protocols. You can think of it like OpenClaw learns from experts teaching it, whereas Hermes learns by reflecting on its own experience.

There are pros and cons to both of these models - for example:

• OpenClaw offers predictability, transparency and quality control but will likely be slower to evolve and learn new skills.
• Hermes could reduce the number of prompts needed to achieve a result, however this will be unpredictable.

Another major difference is the user interface that each framework provides. User experience can be a make or break for a lot of people, so it's definitely worth discussing.  OpenClaw does not come with a desktop app - instead it provides a locally hosted web page with a chat interface and plenty of options. This means you can run the GUI on pretty much any operating system, however it does not come with the speed and seamless integration of a desktop app. Hermes, however, does provide a desktop app - but only for Windows and Mac OS. Windows and Mac OS are more popular than Linux, and the majority of Linux users are probably fairly comfortable with using the terminal interface - but this could scare some people away from using Hermes.

Comparison Table

Feature	OpenClaw	Hermes Agent
License	MIT, free and open source	MIT, free and open source
Runtime	Node.js	Python
Memory	Persistent memory via local Markdown files across sessions	Extracts reusable patterns from completed tasks into skill files.
Skills	Markdown SKILL.md files in workspace. Uses skill library ClawHub.	Auto-generated by the agent itself. Shareable via Skills Hub.
Interfaces	Web user interface or terminal.	Desktop app for Windows and Mac OS only, terminal with polished UI also available. Linux only has access to the terminal user interface.
Multi-Agent	Multi-agent routing, inbound channels routed to isolated agents with their own workspaces and sessions.	Different profiles on one machine, each with its own config, env and SOUL.md (personality).
Popularity (as of July 2026)	381k GitHub Stars	208k GitHub stars

 

Our Test

To compare the two ourselves, we got both agents to do the exact same task using the exact same prompt. The task was to SSH into one of our servers and set up a fresh, working install of OpenCart 3.0.5.0. As expected, both completed the task successfully, with a couple of differences. Firstly, the token usage; our OpenClaw agent used ~35k tokens, whereas Hermes used ~52k tokens. This was, of course, for the same task -however Hermes developing and adding skills while it performs tasks is the likely culprit for the higher token usage. It would be interesting to see whether in the long run this makes Hermes more efficient than OpenClaw or not. One other minor difference was that the OpenClaw agent added the OpenCart admin logins it created to the root of the server in a CSV file - Hermes did not do this. This in itself doesn't cause any security concern, but I wonder if OpenClaw's willingness to create a file like this is a hint towards the agent potentially neglecting the importance of security.